Lewis was treading in the footsteps of giants. And, by most accounts, I gather he had an abiding respect for children's literature, of all levels of "worthiness". But I'm not sure whether he troubled to keep up with later developments in the field once he was no longer a child.
What comparitively few people seem to remember to point out is that when he reached the point of writing children's stories, he deliberately chose to write in a style that was already a generation or two out of date. Really, the style of his storytelling is such as recalls both what a children's story was in his own childhood, but would also reasure parents of modern children that what they'd got was something "solid".
The style wasn't going to be any bar to the children. Children read for story, rather than style (which is what is wrong with Last Battle. The story itself is bogus). But Lewis's work was long enough ago that we forget that he was not writing in an era of doorstops. Not just in children's fiction -- it seems to be Rowling who finally managed to nudge publishers into producing doorstop novels for the under 12 set. But even adult novels were rarely beyond the 400 page range when Lewis was writing. Doorstops seem to be a more recent development.
When a novel was packaged to consist of 250-400 pages it encouraged anyone who wanted to sell their work to focus on the central story. But that doesn't touch upon issues of style. Lewis was writing neo-Victorian, didactic children's stories. "Didactic" is not a dirty word, nor is it a function to be abhorred. But it does need a light touch, and writers have known this since before Victoria was crowned. Overdo it and children simply will not read it.
But instruction has been an unstated purpose of fiction (not just children's fiction) for an long time now, and most people agree that the best instruction is usually enjoyable. But there is a fundamental lack of concensus on how such instruction is to be delivered, and there are any number of ways to do it. Lewis adopted the direct format of the narrator instructing the reader, from the standpoint of an assumption that the narrator, being older, is better informed than the reader. This was the default setting all through the 19th century. Comparisons with such popular novels as Mrs Molesworth's 'The Cuckoo Clock' or, even better, 'The Carved Lions' are particulary sound here. Let alone anything by E. Nesbit.
Rowling also claims to have been an avid reader as a child, but I tend to doubt that much of her reading was fantasy. Indeed, from most of her interview statements (leaving aside the possibility that her interview statements may have been deliberately coached by her publicists) she seems be very unclear on just what fantasy is. And she certainly appears to have little respect for it as a genre.
Nevertheless, she appears to have thought that that the story she wanted to tell would be best presented in a fantasy setting, and she appears to have strenuously attempted to resist presenting any coherent form of instruction in the telling of it. This may have been deliberate, but the end result appears to be a failed experiment. It is not possible to tell a story without instructing the reader in *some* manner, otherwise you come across as having nothing to say. And, at the end of the day, Rowling comes across as having led us all up the garden path, not in a clever series of faux mysteries as she did the first half of the series, but by stringing together a impressionist tangle of visual clichés which ultimately contradict themselves, lead nowhere or tell us nothing.
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What comparitively few people seem to remember to point out is that when he reached the point of writing children's stories, he deliberately chose to write in a style that was already a generation or two out of date. Really, the style of his storytelling is such as recalls both what a children's story was in his own childhood, but would also reasure parents of modern children that what they'd got was something "solid".
The style wasn't going to be any bar to the children. Children read for story, rather than style (which is what is wrong with Last Battle. The story itself is bogus). But Lewis's work was long enough ago that we forget that he was not writing in an era of doorstops. Not just in children's fiction -- it seems to be Rowling who finally managed to nudge publishers into producing doorstop novels for the under 12 set. But even adult novels were rarely beyond the 400 page range when Lewis was writing. Doorstops seem to be a more recent development.
When a novel was packaged to consist of 250-400 pages it encouraged anyone who wanted to sell their work to focus on the central story. But that doesn't touch upon issues of style. Lewis was writing neo-Victorian, didactic children's stories. "Didactic" is not a dirty word, nor is it a function to be abhorred. But it does need a light touch, and writers have known this since before Victoria was crowned. Overdo it and children simply will not read it.
But instruction has been an unstated purpose of fiction (not just children's fiction) for an long time now, and most people agree that the best instruction is usually enjoyable. But there is a fundamental lack of concensus on how such instruction is to be delivered, and there are any number of ways to do it. Lewis adopted the direct format of the narrator instructing the reader, from the standpoint of an assumption that the narrator, being older, is better informed than the reader. This was the default setting all through the 19th century. Comparisons with such popular novels as Mrs Molesworth's 'The Cuckoo Clock' or, even better, 'The Carved Lions' are particulary sound here. Let alone anything by E. Nesbit.
Rowling also claims to have been an avid reader as a child, but I tend to doubt that much of her reading was fantasy. Indeed, from most of her interview statements (leaving aside the possibility that her interview statements may have been deliberately coached by her publicists) she seems be very unclear on just what fantasy is. And she certainly appears to have little respect for it as a genre.
Nevertheless, she appears to have thought that that the story she wanted to tell would be best presented in a fantasy setting, and she appears to have strenuously attempted to resist presenting any coherent form of instruction in the telling of it. This may have been deliberate, but the end result appears to be a failed experiment. It is not possible to tell a story without instructing the reader in *some* manner, otherwise you come across as having nothing to say. And, at the end of the day, Rowling comes across as having led us all up the garden path, not in a clever series of faux mysteries as she did the first half of the series, but by stringing together a impressionist tangle of visual clichés which ultimately contradict themselves, lead nowhere or tell us nothing.